There had definitely just beensomethingthat happened. It was like there was a—she didn’t know how to describe it. A hitch? A flicker? Like the lights had gone off and on again. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “I’m just tired.”
The smile on his face told her that it was probably something. But it also had a slight edge to it that said that even if he knew what it was, he wasn’t going to say. So she let it go.
Walking over to the large diamond-paned window that stretched across the back of his quarters, she looked out at the bay where the ship was moored. It was gorgeous—a tropical paradise. A place she’d kill to go on vacation to, but she was here trying to dodge getting murdered and rewrite a classic into something “unique.”
“So,” she started, crossing her arms over her chest. “If we manage to kill Peter Pan instead of him killing you—feed the kid to the crocodile, does that count as unique?”
“No, that’s just called lazy writing. ‘Move Mordor closer to the Shire’ or ‘Make Midsummer Night’s Dream a Tragedy’ doesn’t do anything interesting, it just makes the book shorter, dear. ‘The villain wins, tragic ending’ isn’t unique for some genres.” A creak of wood, and she glanced over to see him get up from the bench of the instrument. He walked over to anothercabinet.
He was a foreboding figure, even dressed down and doing something mundane like opening up a cabinet reaching for an antique glass bottle. He made for a perfectly nightmarish but sharply beautiful Captain Hook.
And she couldn’t help but stare.
Vile-as-Hook took the glass bottle—she thought they might be called onion bottles—and uncorked it. Pouring a dark liquid into two thick crystal glasses, he popped the cork back into the neck.
“So an unexpected rewrite to the story isn’t unique enough?”
“I’m afraid not. You’ll need to do something more interesting than surface-level rewrites to satisfy the criteria.” Hook walked up to her, one goblet resting in the bend of his hook and the other in his flesh-and-blood hand. He extended his hand to her, offering her a drink.
She took it. Sniffing the drink revealed it to be brandy. Yeah. She could use a damn drink. “Is this real? Will it work?” She took a sip.
“If you want it to. That’s how fiction works, darling.” He took a sip of his own. His smile was all the more devilish with the trademark Captain Hook goatee. But he wore it very, very well, she decided.
Images flashed through her mind, unbidden, of him fisting her hair in his hand, wrenching her head back, threatening her with that jagged piece of metal—handsome and terrifying, powerful and seductive?—
Slamming the door on those thoughts, she balled them up and tried to throw them into a wood chipper in her mind. God, she really needed to get laid more.Stop thirsting after the creepy murder pirate! Wait.
Fuck.
He can read your thoughts.
Chugging the brandy, her cheeks were hot as she walked over to the bar to pour herself a second one. Really, it was an excuse to hide her obvious blush. But it was too late. “Sorry.”
That sent him into a peal of deep laughter. “For what?”
“You can read my thoughts.”
“Only when we’re outside of stories. Whatever just happened is your own business. But now I’m deeply curious. What did you think to yourself that was so scandalous you had to apologize?”
“Nothing.” It was a bad lie. A really bad one.
“Hmm.” He was suddenly right behind her, his presence at her back causing her to jolt in surprise. “Really? Nothing at all?”
When the point of his hook scraped along the edge of her jawline, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, she shuddered.
It was an open door. An invitation. She wondered—what would he do, if she turned around and—no, no, no. He’s trying to kill you and your sister. He’s trapped you here. He’s an eldritch monster. It doesn’t matter how hot he is as a pirate.
At least her thoughts were her own, now. Or at least, that’s what he was telling her. It was possible he was lying. But it didn’t matter either way. She wasn’t going to take the bait. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Pity.” He was gone as quickly as he had been there. “The matter remains—we cannot simply kill Pan to make for an interesting story. It’s cheap. Uninteresting. Shock value. No, we must play within the larger narrative at work. It must bewritten in.Work with thethemes.”
Okay, fine. Sure. That made sense, she guessed.
Trying to focus her thoughts back to the more important matter at hand, she walked over to a bench by one wall and sat down, needing to feel something stable underneath her. She sipped the brandy that time. “So, all right. Peter Pan is about childhood innocence versus growing up and the fear of death. Captain Hook is afraid of death, in the form of the crocodile with a literal ticking clock in its stomach.”
“Mmhm.” He was standing at the window, gazing out over the bay.
“I’d say we force Peter Pan to grow up, but that’s been done.” She sighed.
